


A Thin, Semantic Line

by notyouranswer (gorgeouschaos)



Series: The Pursuit of Complete Understanding [2]
Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Cecil is not human, Early in Canon, Gen, Pre-Slash, The Voice of Night Vale, Typical Night Vale Weirdness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-05
Updated: 2019-12-05
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:28:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21676780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gorgeouschaos/pseuds/notyouranswer
Summary: Carlos starts falling in love with Cecil, and he starts falling in love with Night Vale. It's kind of the same thing.
Relationships: Carlos & Cecil Palmer, Carlos/Cecil Palmer, Carlos/Night Vale
Series: The Pursuit of Complete Understanding [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1562653
Comments: 14
Kudos: 226





	A Thin, Semantic Line

**Author's Note:**

> This one’s maybe a little darker than Red Flag Means Run. Warning for a really brief reference to a suicide attempt. I’m planning to write a third fic with this concept from Cecil’s POV so if you’re interested that’ll be the third fic in this series.
> 
> Thanks for reading, hope you like it, and feedback makes my day :)

Carlos had never been satisfied with what science could explain. There was so much _weird_ in the world that even the most advanced research couldn’t come close to accounting for, so many theories that couldn’t hold up to any kind of scrutiny. 

Carlos had never been satisfied with not knowing. It had never been in his nature to settle for a guess.

One of his professors felt the same. Professor Liu had a list of all known unexplainable events in her office. Her list consisted of events like Dyatlov Pass as well as phenomena like Hector the Convector and the Naga Fireballs. Carlos had heard of all but one of the items on the list.

“What happened-- or happens-- in Night Vale?” he’d asked. 

Professor Liu had smiled. 

Three years later, trying to understand how some metal tree statues could create a forcefield, Carlos wants to blame Professor Liu for ending up in Night Vale. He doesn’t.

Carlos knows in his bones that even if she hadn’t told him about this town he would have ended up here anyway.

He’s always been weird. Not special, not extraordinary. Just weird. He’d been weird for preferring books to people, for actually liking school, and, to an unfortunately large portion of the population, he’d been weird for being queer.

He’s weird in Night Vale, too, but it was the good kind of weird. The kind he liked being. 

In Night Vale, Carlos is special.

(To Cecil, Carlos is special. Therefore, to Night Vale, Carlos is special.

It’s as simple, and as impossible, as that.)

The PTA meeting results in thirty-seven deaths and Carlos still doesn’t have the chance to see a real dinosaur. 

“The real tragedy,” he tells Aspen, the biologist of his team, “is, of course, the casualties. But…”

“But dinosaurs,” they say, nodding. “Dinosaurs.”

Aspen is, out of all of his team, the most like him. Carlos had originally been planning to recruit a biology grad student he knew, but Professor Liu had recommended Aspen. 

Jessica says Aspen and Carlos aren’t allowed to spend time together unsupervised, but she’s at Big Rico’s with James and Alexis-- the Sheriff’s Secret Police cut them all a little slack, but it’s best to be safe-- so they’re free to make bad decisions.

“We could check if the portal left any residual energy,” Aspen offers. 

Carlos grins.

The portal did, in fact, leave residual energy behind. It’s highly radioactive energy, though, so Carlos and Aspen are in the school gym just long enough to convince Sam that the two of them can have the scales left behind. Carlos drives both ways, since Night Vale likes him best.

“Holy shit holy shit holy shit,” Aspen chants. Carlos opens the door to his team’s base and Aspen dances through, caressing the iridescent scales in their hands. “I’m touching real dinosaur scales.”

From the kitchen, Jessica yells, “Carlos, Cecil says he hopes you know those scales are poisonous.”

Aspen sprints to their lab.

Aspen ends up hospitalized, but they maintain that it was worth it.

“Dinosaurs,” they murmur, eyes sliding past at Carlos’ worried face. “I got to touch a dinosaur scale.”

The veins in their hands are jet black and visible through their skin.

“This happens at least once every few years,” the nurse, a faceless and shapeless nun, tells Carlos confidentially. “The scales seem to attract people who have…”

She trails off. Carlos blinks. “Have what?” 

“Well, I suppose it’s okay to tell you, you’re Carlos and you have perfect hair. People who have attempted suicide.”

Carlos stares at Aspen. “That wasn’t yours to say.” In fact, he’s pretty sure telling someone about mental illness without the person’s consent is illegal in Night Vale.

“Sorry,” the nun says. Her unknowable face turns red and she floats towards the door. “They’ll be fine by 6:02 am.”

Carlos calls Jessica and stays by Aspen’s bed through the night. On his show that night Cecil mentions Aspen’s hospitalization but nothing else about it, which Carlos mentally thanks him for.

“Cecil?” Carlos asks, watching the hospital ceiling as his eyelids grow heavy. “I know you can hear me. Or at least I think you can. I don’t want to make you do anything, and I’m sure you know already, but… But Sister Unperceivable violated a patient’s confidentiality. And it… I didn’t like that.”

Cecil, or Night Vale, doesn’t respond. Carlos drifts off to sleep knowing he was heard anyway.

Cecil comes by the hospital the next morning.

The Voice of Night Vale opens the door cautiously. He’s carrying a Martian Fly Trap in a glazed blue pot. 

He places the plant on Aspen’s nightstand. 

“I’m sorry that I didn’t warn them in time.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Carlos croaks. He clears his throat. Cecil is very close. His eyes are very purple.

“But it is,” Cecil says miserably. “Oh perfect, handsome, wonderful Carlos, if I could keep you and your Team of Scientists safe I would.”

“I know.” 

Carlos believes Cecil. The Voice of Night Vale doesn’t lie. Not to Carlos.

“Then you know it’s my fault,” Cecil says. He strokes a finger along the top of the Martian Fly Trap. Its fangs shiver. “I see so much, Carlos. I see everything. I should have seen this sooner.”

“Not your fault,” Carlos repeats. It’s tempting to blame Cecil, but Night Vale is too wild and too real to ever be safe.

Cecil sits beside Carlos until Aspen wakes up.

“Oh, hey Cecil,” Aspen says. They sit up. “Ooh, a Martian Fly Trap!”

After Cecil leaves with a lingering glance at Carlos, Carlos asks Aspen, “Do you want to go home?”

“I mean, yeah? I’m hungry and I want a shower.”

“No, not the house. I mean _home_.”

Aspen pauses for too long before laughing. “Right. Nah, I’m good.”

“Why?” Carlos asks. His eyes sting and he blinks furiously.

“Oh, Carlos,” Aspen murmurs. They place their hand over his. “I’m a scientist, dude. I’m just looking for the truth. And that’s here. In Night Vale.”

Carlos nods. He’s nearly been killed at least seventeen times, but he thinks of the base as home too. Night Vale is home now.

He’s never even considered leaving.

Carlos drives Aspen home. They insist they’re fine but he still forces them to stay out of the lab for a day. 

Carlos enters the kitchen to find his other three scientists staring at him. 

“What?” he snaps. He’s tired, his neck hurts, and he’s hungry. He’s in no mood to talk to people.

“Nothing,” James says. The physicist stabs at his broccoli aggressively.

Carlos makes a sandwich and goes to bed.

That night the five of them sit around the radio the Sheriff’s Secret Police had gifted them. Cecil’s voice fills the living room with its soothing cadences and some of the tension drains from Carlos’ shoulders immediately.

“We do not disappear when-- or if-- we die,” Cecil says. “Instead we merely scatter, becoming just another layer of atoms across the earth, becoming one with the desert sands forever. Welcome to Night Vale.”

Cecil’s voice is calming to Carlos, but Jessica, James, and Alexis appear on edge. 

“And now, the news,” Cecil says once his intro music has finished. “Sister Unperceivable, a nurse at the Cruel Mercy Hospital, committed an unforgivable act last night. She is being fired as we speak. She illegally revealed one of the seven types of secrets the Sheriff’s Secret Police protect.”

Cecil’s voice takes on the resonant, unearthly tone that Carlos remembers from the Telly Incident. “Sister Unperceivable is made of approximately twenty liters of argon gas. She lives at 762 Right Ventricle Drive. She will be sitting at the back right booth in Big Rico’s tonight.”

Cecil’s voice becomes cheerful again. “And now, the community calendar.”

A thrill of vicious satisfaction buzzes under Carlos’ skin.

Sister Unperceivable vanishes the next day. Cecil reports on her disappearance with glee. 

James comes into Carlos’ room as Carlos is reading that night. He closes the door after him.

“Be careful,” James tells Carlos. “You know what Night Vale can do when it’s going easy on you. I don’t want to find out what Cecil can do if he gets angry.”

Carlos doesn’t answer. He doesn’t disagree.

Having the terrifying power of the Voice of Night Vale in love with him is something Carlos must not allow himself to get used to. Using Cecil against his personal enemies is something he must not allow himself to do.

The thing is, though, it’s so easy.

And his Scientists will always be his first priority.

Carlos gets bit by one of the dogs when the pack of ‘wild dogs’ was roaming through Night Vale. He has no idea how a plastic bag bit him, but it didn’t seem to matter that it didn’t have teeth. Alexis bans him from missions.

She decides to cheer him up by letting him help her analyze one of the dinosaur scales Aspen reluctantly relinquished. Discovering its unusual physical properties does make him a little better about getting bitten by a _plastic bag_. 

His first thought is _I bet Cecil would like this._

His second thought is _Oh, shit._

“Dinosaur scales aren’t physically possible, Cecil,” Carlos tells his ceiling. “I thought you might like that fact.”

Cecil’s Children’s Science Corner segment features dinosaurs the next day. His information is mostly wrong, but it makes Carlos smile.

Carlos takes to telling Cecil about the science he does each day, and Cecil sneaks the facts into his show. It’s a conversation they can have with no awkwardness and no unsaid words between them.

It’s weird. It’s beautiful. And, as Cecil reminds Night Vale, there is only a thin, semantic line between the two.

Carlos knows perfectly well that being loved by the Voice of Night Vale is a dangerous proposition. Loving him might even be more so.

Falling in love with Cecil Palmer is as deadly as it is inevitable. Falling in love with Night Vale will almost certainly kill him.

He doesn’t leave.

Carlos forces his Team of Scientists-- thanks to Cecil, Carlos even thinks that in capitals-- to take a break from analyzing wheat and wheat by-products and have a picnic in the sand wastes.

“Are you mother-henning us?” Jessica asks from the backseat. “Because I’ve saved your life at least twice, I have research going, and I don’t appreciate it.”

“Maybe,” Carlos says. “Shut up and feel taken care of.”

Jessica subsides, grumbling. 

The sand wastes glint concerning shades in the sun. Carlos unloads his crate of subway sandwiches, hands out Cokes, and leans back in the shade of a cactus. 

“This is kind of nice,” James admits. 

“You’re welcome,” Carlos says.

They can’t stay out past 10:38, because that’s when the sandworms begin their hunts, but the five of them stay to watch the sun sink down over the horizon. The car radio clicks on just after sunset and Cecil’s voice fills the desert air, describing the thoughts of a tarantula living in a storm drain.

“It’s almost soothing,” James says, “in a weird kind of way. Something like peaceful.”

“There is a thin, semantic line between weird and beautiful,” Carlos says.

“And it is covered in jellyfish,” Alexis adds.

“Let’s go home,” Jessica says once it starts to get cold.

_Home_.

“Yeah,” Carlos agrees. “Let’s go home.”

Cecil’s voice fills the car the whole way.

Falling in love with Cecil (with Night Vale) is real. It’s the one phenomenon he can’t explain but knows to be a law of the universe anyway.

It’s weird. And it’s beautiful.

And maybe Carlos doesn’t need to be able to understand everything after all.


End file.
